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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Ops Experts Club. If you're at all interested in anything we talk about here in this episode, go ahead and check out the description down below and click any of the links there. Or if you just want to know more about us, click the links below. Now onto the episode. Woo. Ops Experts Club.
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B
Thought it was my time. Finally. You're pointing at me.
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A
Dang it, dude. Well, you didn't take it fast enough. And then typically, you're a drummer, so, like, I don't always know, like, are you a singer and a drummer? And then, like, I'm. I feel like I don't want to put you in an awkward position. You know what I'm saying? So it's. Maybe if you could play drums while I sing it.
- [00:34]
B
Yeah, how do you play drums to woo?
- [00:36]
A
No, it's for the Offset Sports Club. It's like Ops Experts Club. Like, you could do a cool, like, clapping rhythm or something.
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B
I have a jingle for it. I got to find it. I'll pull it out next week.
- [00:44]
A
If you came up with a jingle, you're getting bonuses. 20, 26 for sure. Anyway, ops experts, so good to have you with us. Love having you here with us. Today, we're going to talk about a topic that it's probably going to piss some people off. And if you're a visionary listening, I just want to say out of the gates. This was Taryn's idea, and so I apologize for it. Out of the gates. But I think it was a good idea nonetheless. So here's the topic for today's study, and that is how to tell your visionary.
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B
No.
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A
Oh, shoot, those. Those are fighting words. You're on the wrong side of that, and you're on the wrong side of that spirit. You're going to get gored. You know, I'm saying, like, you're on the wrong side of the bowl. You don't have that cute little cape and falling those tights on. You are going to get it. You're going to get the horns, bro. That's how it's going to work.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Taran, how many. How many calls have you been on or you have seen, like, the visionary go full bull, like, full charging with the horns based upon purely not receiving the answer that they wanted to receive.
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B
I've probably been on more calls that it's happened than it didn't happen.
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A
I feel like visionaries. Here's the thing is, typically this is what I would say with visionaries, they don't want to be on meetings anyway. They don't like being on meetings. But the one thing that they're there to do to be on meetings is to tell you what to do and what they want to see. So then they don't like meetings, don't want to be on meetings, tell you what they want to do, and you tell them no. Oh, my gosh. We are at the pinnacle of pissed. This is like pissed off mountain. And dude, we just reached it. Taryn. And that's when you are going to get the horrors. What do you think about that?
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B
Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's exactly how it goes.
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A
It's.
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B
It's always tough, you know, having a meeting with a visionary because. Yeah, it's not. It's.
- [02:18]
A
Man. I just think, here's the thing. And visionaries don't think this is your license to get out of meetings. I actually think this is your growth opportunity. Right. Like all of us are looking for growth opportunities. Things. There are all kinds of things that all of us don't want to be doing. Honestly, probably for your team, half the stuff you're asking them to do, they didn't want to do. But they're doing it because they want you to be happy. Right. So your kindness that you can give back to them is show up on a meeting, suffer through it if you need to, and be kind as you do. But realize this is that not every request can be a yes. Taryn, you want to talk about that a minute? Why cannot every request. Taryn, I'm a visionary. This whole company's mine. I say what goes here. Why can't everything that I say be a yes?
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B
I think, think the big thing that I always have to remind visionaries is things sound simpler in your mind than they are to do the work for. And so you probably do not realize what your team is doing with all their time and how long it's going to take them to do that. And so you don't know what they're still in the middle of doing from the last time you ranted. And so what's still not completed from them? What are we working on?
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A
Still ranted such a hard. Right, let's soften that. Let's soften that. Because we're already pissing people off since the last time you gave them a really good idea. Go ahead.
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B
Yes, yes, yes. That one. Yeah. And so what might sound like is a very simple request. And I heard one today and it was like, oh, yeah, in the future we should look into this. And in my mind I'm thinking like, that's can't even fathom all of the decision trees and issues that go along with trying to figure out what to you sounded like a really simple task, but to me could end up being like a five hour headache and a hundred dollars a month in new apps you have to purchase to make it happen. So it's, it's just two different worlds, you know, it's, it's dreaming and it's doing.
- [04:01]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, realistically. So I think in a lesser, lesser hostile environment, we should probably retitle this message. Prioritization and chaos. How to make smart decisions under pressure, right? Like how do you, how do you make smart decisions? All of us want to make smart decision visionaries. Like, let's just be honest. You just gotta be kind and honest to yourself. You do cause a little bit of chaos. Probably not only in your business, but probably in your marriage and your family life and all because you're high energy. You're like, you've got big ideas, you got stuff you want to do and you're the mover and the shaker that keeps the world moving, man. We need leaders like you. I think that you're the ones that are birthing new ideas and coming up with the cool stuff that everybody buys and everybody gets excited about that comes out of you. I get it. That's a high pressure. The downside is there are going to have to be some yes and nos to be able to get all the things done. Unless you just want a hundred people on your team. And for some visionaries, not even that's going to be able to do it. You're going to need even more than that. I was so surprised how many people we needed to throw at Pedro Adeo. I felt like no matter, we couldn't hire enough people. I couldn't hire enough people to keep up with Pedro. Like, he's got so much vision. The guy has so much things he wants to do. But I think that we've got to get smart about what we're saying yes to and no to and determine some sort of decision filter, right? Like how do we decide what's a yes and what's a no? Because it can't be how passionate the visionary is about it. Because they're passionate about every fricking new idea they've got. Right? And the other thing is they're not. It's not like they're objective. They're not like this idea against this idea. Every idea they come with is the best idea they've ever had. And every meeting that they meet with the operations Team on. It's like they're selling it to us first. If they can just convince us of that, then they're going to be able to convince other people of that.
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B
So.
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A
So they come with so much energy. And just like you said, Taryn, they talk it down. Like, talk down. Like, hey, small little tweak. It's not that big of a deal. This is quick. The quick little build you probably can build by this afternoon. Like, that's. That's last words. Right? Minimize the lift and like, minimize the confusion that it could throw on the field in the chaos of what is that collateralized of other things that are going on. Like, how does that line up with your other offers? Where are we at with other bills that you said were really important to get through by the end of this quarter?
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B
Yeah, I mean, and you know, there's always kind of a priority to be said when it comes to certain requests. Like, is it broken? That's high priority. Is it something that's been promised to people? That's high priority. Right. Obviously that's pretty clear. You know, that's what you need to be working on. But outside of that, you know, we're kind of talking about like a new request, you know, what's. What's coming down, the future. And there's a couple ways I've always dealt with that is what's on the calendar, you know, how's this fit in with what else we've got going on?
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A
Super good.
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B
So there we need to look at if you still want to squeeze it in. What do we need to squeeze out? You know, because it could not possibly fit in the calendar just because of time and what you've already promised. So we have to drop something else. And then of course, the rocks, as you mentioned. What's. What are we already working on? What can we pause? We come to the rocks all the time in so many of these conversations, Aaron, because that's just. That's our filter and that's our guide for the quarter.
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A
Yeah, I mean, Eos, Gino Wickman would say in his book Traction that every person on a team should carry three to five rocks. Like that's. That's the max. You should be asking your team. Rocks is just another term for a big project. Right? So you as the visionary, come at the beginning of the year, you give your annual. Or maybe it's the end of the year previous, you give your annual goals. Right. Hey, this is the annual plan. We're doing an annual planning session. This is all my vision. I want to get to here on this high mountain peak by the end of next year, right? So for us to get to the high mountain peak, we got to break down those big hairy, audacious goals into bite sized pieces, right? And those bite sized pieces are rocks that we're going to sign out to different players on the team. And every player should have three to five of them. Well, if this is your big hairy, audacious goal, your bhag to get to by the end of the year, that's great. We love you for it. You're the visionary. Give us the vision. Cast the vision, right? Play me a song. You're the piano man, right? Give us what we're looking for. But realize the only way to make it to that much height is by stacking incremental blocks on each other to get there. Right. So this quarter we decided these were the blocks, Right. Because every quarter we believe you should be having a rock party. Not big hair, not tight leathers turn, but actually a decision making filter on what are the big projects to get us to our annual goal for the year. Right. And if this is what was decided and visionary rolls up with another big idea in this quarter, it's really important to understand where's that going to fit? Taran, do you want to, I mean, you have such a great way of explaining the way rocks should work. Do you want to just break that down for folks?
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B
Yeah. So there's different types of rock. So there's like magma also is a type of rock. It's a stage of rock. There's lava, magma.
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A
It's very fluid rock.
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B
Very fluid, Yeah. I mean the way the life cycle goes is you've got your 10 year target, you've kind of got your three year picture, you got your one year goal.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And breaking down from a one year goal is how do we get to this one year goal in quarterly projects. And the reason they pick quarters is because research showed that people tend to lose track or get really unfocused or get tasks switched easily every 90 days. And so by putting things into 90 day chunks, you're then using what they've learned about people and how they operate to be able to keep them focused for 90 days on something specific that gets them to that goal that they need to be at the end of the year. Every rock isn't going to take four phases to get to the end of the year, but it could take four phases get to the end of the year, or it could just be a one and done rock in that quarter. That's kind of how we get there is what, what's the priority for the year? Where do we want to go?
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A
Yeah, I think it's super smart just to realize however you organize it, like realizing you can only move so many big initiatives at once. Otherwise what's going to happen is you're going to try and rush it or you're going to try and stack too much on your team. And then you, you deal with like it's a landslide turner, like it's a rock slide. The whole thing, it doesn't go well. And then what happens is you spin out poorly built products and then you're going to get less of a result out of them as a result, you know. So I think that for visionary realizing there is a decision tree, the decision tree is made by what you said was the priority for the year. And then we did set a rock, a set of rocks, three to five for each player. And that's what we've told them we're doing this quarter. So if you've got another big idea, that's great. Yes, we'll put it on rock ideas for next quarter. No problem. We would love to include that. That sounds like a great idea. Visionaries don't love to hear that, but I think if you can explain to them, hey, decision making happen based upon what you said the priorities were. Now if you're saying we're going to change priorities and we need to make a camera's favorite word. Pivot.
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B
Pivot.
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A
I would just say, I would reserve that for only absolute, necessary occasions. Because what happens most, what we see happen with a lot of visionaries, a lot of operations teams that they burn out, is that they get whiplash. They were heading this direction 70 miles an hour, and you whipped a hard right and, man, you just lost half your crew out the side of the car because it was like they, it's giving them too much. Like, it's too, too much pivoting, too much knee jerk, too much. Like, let's really drill down on what our primary, what our primary things are. You know, I, I once heard a guy talk about custom and how it's really hard to scale custom because there's so much build and it's so unique and there's so many. If you're trying to sell custom railing for houses, let's say, and every house gets a custom rail, that's a long buildup. But if you can optimize, if you can say, no, no, this is how we do it. This is how we Prof. These things out and Then just live within the way that you create. Then you can create a lot of new ideas that are standard and your people can produce them. But if every new idea of yours is some custom build, some unique thing like you were talking about, Taren requires some new set of tools and therefore skill set and therefore a learning curve and therefore time to execute. Meanwhile, something else on the product offering is going to suffer because their time was all being given to something else. You're not, as a visionary, going to be happy in the end. And that's where we see a lot of pain points between visionaries and operations teams. Is visionary, has so much vision and has no decision making filter. And the ops team can just be a yes ma', am, and they give too many yeses and then it leads to confusion and chaos because they don't have a smart decision making process of how to make decisions under pressure. And they don't use a matrix like the rocks. The rocks keep it very, very plain, very simple.
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B
Mm. Yeah. And within the filter too, there's always the final thing I always try to look at when we're getting to requests is what's the why behind it? Yeah, because sometimes there are times to pivot or there are times where you want to say no, but you learn the why and you're like, all right, guys, we have to do this. There can be times when the boss promised to be on somebody's podcast, forgot about it, and now it's Friday and everybody on the team has to work to get on it, to save face, because it's a really big person, it's a really big opportunity. You could have said no, but once you learn the why behind the request, you're like, okay, yeah, this is. This will be a big opportunity for the company. Let's all focus on this. Or maybe he lets you all know or not.
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A
How many things have you done? Let's pause there for a minute. How many things have you built last minute? Because visionary forgotten and you scrambled together and you had to work into the night and you had to work over the weekend and you got it up and they forgot to drop it on the podcast or they forgot to mention it, or it was like we got like two responses out of the lift.
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B
Yeah, that does happen. That does happen.
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A
So sad. And what a waste because it burns out Terence energy and it burns resources. Right, Terence? Not cheap to do all your build out. And I think, honestly, Terence come back to me before and said, you know, customers have circled back around and been like, hey, could you guys jump back in and do this for me. And Taryn's like, giving me signals behind the scenes of like, no, no, I don't. I don't want to work for that guy anymore. That guy's too crazy. It's too much. I don't want to take on that kind of client right now. So if you have somebody else on the team that wants to take that on, that's great, but I don't want to do the work, you know, And I think that that's important to realize because visionary, you probably really enjoy the team you work with, but they're going to stop enjoying working with you because they just. They don't want to live in that kind of chaos. Nobody wants to live in 247 chaos for years on end. Yeah.
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B
That's for sure.
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A
I love the sprint. I love when they say it's a sprint. Hey, I just need you to do a sprint. And you're like, brother, when do we stop doing a sprint? Like, I feel like we've been sprinting three years. Like, there's been no let off. Like, I feel like any marathon, you got to know, yeah, there's a time you're going to pour on the gas, but you can't pour on the gas the whole marathon. Like, that's not realistic. Nobody's going to be able to run at that pace. And people burn through team. You know, we've. There have been clients we've picked up because we're operators that fractionally will be sourced out to help teams grow. And their operators, we watch, watch us come onto the field, and within a month, they're like, hey, peace. Collab team's here and they'll just bounce out because can't take it anymore. They've. They've been pushed as far as they're going to push, and they just go radio silent. And the visionary, so pissed, so frustrated, and they have so many terrible things to say about this person leaving. But Taryn and I just always look at each other and we're like, happens every time. Because you pushed too hard for too long. They were redlining for too long. And when they saw an opportunity to bounce, they did.
- [14:49]
B
Yeah.
- [14:49]
A
So, Taran, we've created a lead magnet. We call it a lead magnet. Something that's going to lead you into something even better for yourself.
- [14:57]
B
A gift.
- [14:58]
A
A gift. A free gift for you.
- [15:00]
B
Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, a gif. A gif.
- [15:02]
A
That's it, right? Taren, I am so glad we got that on recording because that is how GIF should be. Pronounced. Anyway, we've given you a free gif and it's a. It's at rocks.opsexpertsacademy. so if you go to rocks.opsexpertsacadinemy.com we're going to give you all the tools that we use to run a weekly meeting. We call it the U10, the ultimate 10 meeting. So is a Rocks spreadsheet that shows you exactly how rocks work, where you can, in a very clear way, assign the rocks, create milestones for the rocks. I think that's really big, right? You have a whole quarter. How do we know the definition of done? Well, it's by milestones that we've set. Knowing that by the end of the quarter it's going to be done. So we'd love to give you the templates for all the sheets we use in the Ultimate 10. It's found@rocks.opsexpertsacademy.com that's awesome.
- [15:51]
B
And if you go to magma.opsexpertsacademY.com you will just hit an error page because it doesn't go anywhere. So don't go there. Make sure you go to Rocks.
- [16:01]
A
But that would be cool. Like secret menu at in and Out. Wouldn't it be cool if like you. Obstetricswitchacademy.com and it was a steady flow, like magma down a hill. It was like a loop video of just magma rolling down a hill.
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B
That's the thing about subdomains. We can have. We can have a million taren.
- [16:16]
A
It's one of the best parts about subdomains. So anyway, it's important you create a decision matrix. It's important that you have a way you can threshold back ops people if you're listening. It's important for you to be able to point and logically explain why not every decision can be a yes. You can give them a yes, but not right now. Unless it's going to be the collateralizing of something else. But if you haven't listed that out and you. You can't show visionary where you're putting your energies. It's very hard for he or she to understand that there isn't enough time. Like we. Not with the current team we have. We can hire some more people or you can tell me one of these things isn't as important, but pull up the list. Okay, so which one of these things isn't as important to you anymore? Okay, we'll push pause on that one. But at least then it's not like yes, yes, yes, yes. And now we have so many yeses, they're unrealistic and you end up disappointing visionary in the end and really, in all honesty, damaging the brand. Because what happens is quality begins to drop. Yep. Taryn Turner, excellent talking, Google. Thank you for spending time with me here on Ops Experts Magma. And we appreciate your time. Ops Experts Club. Thanks for being here. Ops Experts Love having you. And we'll see you next week right here, same place.
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B
So, yeah.